Is anyone going this weekend who follows my blog? I know my best friend and biggest fan is going with me. I can’t wait, looks like the event is going to have some great speakers this year. I think I am most looking forward to hearing Tim Ferriss speak. As always I’ll take great notes and will have pictures and video after the event to share for those of you who won’t be able to make it.

“Original blue men Chris Wink, Matt Goldman, and Phil Stanton, together with their wives, Jen Wink, Renee Rolleri, and Jennifer Stanton, conceived the school as an alternative to the New York school scene. “There’s this incredible pressure in Manhattan private schools to get young children into Harvard. Like, at 2,” says Rolleri, whose background is in art therapy and child development. The Blue School, Goldman says, was a response to what was “not happening” in education. “Schools are educating creativity and innovation out of children,” he says, “and sucking the joy out of that experience.”

“70 year-old Buddhist monk Hua Chi has been praying in the same spot at his temple in Tongren, China for over 20 years. His footprints, which are up to 1.2 inches deep in some areas, are the result of performing his prayers up to 3000 times a day. Now that he is 70, he says that he has greatly reduced his quantity of prayers to 1,000 times each day.”

Here is an email I received earlier in the week. You know I am a sucker for animal stories so here is one that is perfect for Mother’s Day. All moms need a helping hand…

A True Duck Story from San Antonio , Texas
Something really cute happened in downtown San Antonio this week. Michael R. is an accounting clerk at Frost Bank and works there in a second story office. Several weeks ago, he watched a mother duck choose the concrete awning outside his window as the unlikely place to build a nest above the sidewalk. The mallard laid ten eggs in a nest in the corner of the planter that is perched over 10 feet in the air. She dutifully kept the eggs warm for weeks, and Monday afternoon all of her ten ducklings hatched.

Michael worried all night how the momma duck was going to get those babies safely off their perch in a busy, downtown, urban environment to take to water, which typically happens in the first 48 hours of a duck hatching. Tuesday morning, Michael watched the mother duck encourage her babies to the edge of the perch with the intent to show them how to jump off. Office work came to a standstill as everyone gathered to watch.

The mother flew down below and started quacking to her babies above. In disbelief Michael watched as the first fuzzy newborn trustingly toddled to the edge and astonishingly leapt into thin air, crashing onto the cement below. Michael couldn’t stand to watch this risky effort nine more times! He dashed out of his office and ran down the stairs to the sidewalk where the first obedient duckling, near its mother, was resting in a stupor after the near-fatal fall. Michael stood out of sight under the awning-planter, ready to help.Read the rest of this entry »

@danielabarbosa is a superstar, she posted these “pictures from the working session when the concept of the Conversation Corporation ebook was first discussed” on her Flickr account. “The Conversational Corporation examines the new ways your employees, the outside world and future generations will communicate and collaborate. From public conversations to social media projects started behind the firewall, social media tools are changing the way we work and altering the expectations of customers and colleagues. This e-book will help you explore the intersection between business and social media and understand the need to transform your organization into a “conversational corporation.” The eBook looks great, I would have been so starstruck to have been in the same room as Scoble…

I’ve been following Tara Hunt’s blog called horsepigcow.com for a while and her post from last week hit home for me. Sometimes we focus on the number of followers we have within our social networks but the point she makes is of all of your followers, how many would bring you soup if you were sick?